A survey of the educational system of the Philippine islands by the Board of educational survey, created under acts 3162 and 3196 of the Philippine Legislature.

BOARD OF EDUCATIONAL SURVEY REPORT

53

commercial enterprise, or professional service. Also few of those who
pursue the vocational curricula engage after graduation in the occupations for which they are trained. They too seek entrance into the
nonmanual vocations. Thus, as administered, almost the entire secondary-school system makes boys and girls unwilling to engage in the
occupations of their fathers and mothers and weans them away from
the soil.
That the school is not wholly to blame for this situation is readily
admitted. This tendency to crowd the academic curricula and the clerical and professional occupations is in part a heritage from the Spanish
regime. During the more than three centuries of Spanish dominion,
through the development of an association between manual labor and
inferior social rank, as well as a connection between the commercial,
official and professional occupations and the favored class, the existing
attitudes towards vocations were formed. Moreover, a narrowly academic education became the badge of membership in this privileged
class. If to these considerations is added the fact that those who engage in the manual and rural occupations live lives of poverty and privation, the present trend in secondary education is adequately explained.
But the school should be used as a great social instrument to alter these
traditions and to make the life of the ordinary man more attractive
and significant.
To bring about the desired changes in secondary education a radical
reorganization is quite unnecessary. Minor changes should be made
in the existing structure, but the great need is for a shift in emphasis.
In the past the public high school has simply drifted with the social
current; in the future it should seek to change the direction of this
current. The great lack in the past has been leadership; the great
need for the future is leadership. There now exist agricultural and
farm schools, trade schools, commercial schools, normal schools, academic schools, and others. But the only schools that are attracting
pupils and therefore functioning, are the academic schools. The institutions that are not functioning must be made to function. In
order to achieve this result certain changes must be made in the present
system and a new philosophy of secondary education, adapted to the
social and economic conditions of the Islands, must be evolved.
The present system of differentiated schools is sound. This system
should consist of three major institutions and several institutions of minor
importance. Secondary education should be administered through a
rural high school, a normal school, an academic high school, and several
schools to represent the industrial, commercial, and other interests of
the Islands.